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The circular economy is failing
75 Plays3 months ago
Amy, Mike, and Anthony discuss some of the recent announcements from major brands and companies who will not be meeting their circularity targets. Then, the discussion turns to the Biden Admin's recent circular economy strategy: will this be enough to turn things around? No, but is it a start?
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Transcript
Introduction of Hosts
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Innovation Matters. It is the Sustainable Innovation Podcast brought to you by Lux Research. I'm your host, Anthony Schiavo. I'm joined here by my two colleagues, ah Mike Holman and Amy Harris.
Reuse and Recycling Overview
00:00:22
Speaker
And today, we're the podcast that Reuses takes. Just like the citizens of America reusing plastic cutlery in order to save the environment. ah um Because we're talking about we're talking about recycling. um There's been a fair bit of recycling news.
Host Personal Plans
00:00:41
Speaker
We haven't talked about the circular economy in a hot minute, and so we thought it would be a good time to come back to that, circle back around, you might say, to that topic and discuss. But before we get into that, Amy, how are you doing? I'm great. Thanks for asking. We're recording this on a Friday. We're all ready to head into the weekend, I think. Big plans big plans for the weekend?
00:01:05
Speaker
Oh my gosh. Let me think. Well, I am planning to to do some hiking in Gatineau Park. There's a free shuttle bus that leaves from near my apartment. And so I'm going to head out there. What about you, Mike? Big plants? Uh, not much. No, my wife's out of town. So I'm just going to be hanging out with the kids. I think we're going to kind of, uh, dig in and watch some movies and stuff. I will be going to the zoo with with my child, if i if indeed we can get her to get out the door. But that's another story altogether.
Recycling Challenges and Technologies
00:01:42
Speaker
Well, with the pleasantries out of the way, the circular economy. Yeah, man. So it's not going good. ah anthony Anthony has been been having serious beefs on LinkedIn about the ah the circular economy. Serious beefs, serious, serious beefs.
00:01:59
Speaker
Yeah, so ah yeah we can start there. I wrote this blog post um about the circular economy, particularly chemical recycling, right, um which encompasses primarily plastic pyrolysis, high temperature process that takes mixed theoretically mixed plastic wastes and converts them into oil, or another like, you know, fossil fuel type feedstock, you can then use that to make more plastics if you really want. to And um it also includes things like PET depolymerization or solvolysis, you know, breaking PET back down into its monomers, which you can then reconstitute into more PET. And I wrote about it because there's been this kind of growing chorus of companies
00:02:46
Speaker
basically admitting or announcing that their 2025 goals, a lot of companies set recycling targets, you know either the amount of material that they themselves were gonna recycle or for brands, consumers of plastic, they set targets for the amount of plastic they were gonna consume um as well as other design changes. And there's been this growing chorus of companies who are announcing that, yeah, we're not gonna we're not goingnna meet any of those targets. And you know but reading between the lines, you know Shell had this announcement. They had pledged to process a million tons of waste annually by 2050. And you know based on what we know about the current state of chemical recycling, they're probably not going to come anywhere close to that, like anywhere close. I think probably the whole industry is is maybe going to process a million tons if
00:03:41
Speaker
things really work out. But it could be a lot lower than that. It could be a lot more like 100,000 tons or even less, because there's been a lot of issues scaling up these technologies. um The plants that have been built do not appear to have been operating at anywhere close to full capacity. And so I wrote this blog or this blog post about this basically saying, yo, things aren't good. They're not good. but um They're bad, actually. And we can get into why all that is, why we think that worked. But but like you said, Mike, um I did get a lot of, you know, former ExxonMobil, you know, chemical industry types in my LinkedIn comments explain to me why.
00:04:25
Speaker
you know Things really weren't that bad. Actually, things are things are fine. and we just you know Success is just right around the corner. There's no fundamental mismatches between the technology in the and the industry or whatever, which was
Debate on Recycling Technology Delays
00:04:40
Speaker
funny. and I was going back and forth with them in the comment section of my post for a while. ah big Vigorous and reasoned debate. Yeah, I mean, I think what a lot of this this comes back to is it's sort of like what we we we talked about with hydrogen a few a few weeks ago. ah To me, and the question with this is how much of this is just delays and some of the fits and starts and and rough patches that you you know you're going to expect whenever you're commercializing a new
00:05:11
Speaker
a new technology like, yeah, we've missed the people. we havent We aren't as far along as we thought we'd be at this point, but we're still making progress. the problems but like it you knowre We're still going to get there with this technology versus how how much do you actually interpret this as a you know as a failure, not just of this particular shell project or any of the others, but as as as a reason to sort of write off this this technology. And I think there's a much better case in the case of ah in the case of paralysis in particular, that um that at least in its current form, it's not not going to be successful. um you I think, you know, in its current form is potentially important. as As you mentioned in the blog, right, there's there's advanced, you know, hydrothermal approaches and things like that that can potentially get over some of the issues.
00:06:00
Speaker
um with with the current technology, but it is something where you do need, you know, I think some pretty significant technology technology advances um in order for this to be to be viable. What would you say are the the big challenges for pyro, sorry, paralysis pyrolysis? Pyrolysis. Why is that technology not, in its current form, not viable? I mean, I'll let Anthony get into the details, but I think kind of the high level and and the the pitch for these advanced recycling processes, right which are more complicated and more expensive to build the mechanical recycling. But the reason they were supposed to be economical is they had economic advantages on either end. but One, they on the the the input side, they could take more mixed or otherwise hard to recycle plastic waste.
00:06:55
Speaker
And two, on the output side, they could produce higher value outputs because it would be virgin quality material, right? You're taking it back down to the monomer, the chemical building blocks, and so you can purify them and make, you know, polymers that are just equivalent to ah to brand new ones. Whereas with mechanical recycling, you ah you can improve the quality of it, but there's inevitably some degree of of degradation. And I think basically for paralysis in particular, it hasn't worked out as, ah you know, there's big challenges on both of those ends. Yeah, that's right. Like the one of the things that people, it's funny because people were saying this in the comments, right? They were saying, Oh, well, you know, like paralysis, you can take mixed waste, you can know, you can do 80% polyolefin waste and you can have like PET in there and all this stuff. And I was like,
00:07:47
Speaker
That's just like not true. like The guidelines, the the Chemical Recycling Association or whatever it was, I think it was, I can't remember exactly the organization. you know We had this first set of guidelines for feedstock inputs last year and you know they were pretty clear, 95% polyolefins. It's both a problem in the sense that it's not as cheap. Like if you can take anything, you can source material a lot more cheaply, right? And companies were expecting to source material. Yeah, you don't have to sort it as much. You don't have to sort it. So there's just like $100 of cost taken out of the equation there. And then you can get more material that people are currently paying, right? Because when you have a ton of material, you have to pay a tipping fee to a landfill or to an incinerator plant.
00:08:34
Speaker
um So, theoretically, if you're a pyrolysis company, you could take that material for, if not free, then pretty close to free, right? But the reality has been that that's not the case, right? They have not been able to use that material as is, and they have generally been having to pay for that material and sourcing it. and And this is particularly problematic because pyrolysis is this big scaled up process. right You need to be at like 100,000 tons of production you know or more to really make the economics make sense. And it's really hard to get 100,000 tons of waste in a single spot.
00:09:08
Speaker
waste is really distributed, right? It's in everyone's houses. It's not in one's place. and And generally speaking, centralizing it takes a lot of work. And because there's not an existing because there's no existing market for these mixed wastes, no one is collecting them. The infrastructure to collect them as there isn't there, I should say. you know The existing recycling ecosystem isn't really set up to support these types of things, right? So that's that's a big issue, right? um The waste is a lot more expensive. It's not as easy to do as they thought. And um and then the output is? The output is is not good as a result, right? Like it's very difficult to produce high quality oils, right? The hydro treating or the amount of effort you then have to put into the oil to make it crackable ready is really high. So you have both this this combination of, oh, you know, it's more expensive than we thought and the quality is worse. The output is lower quality than we thought.
00:10:05
Speaker
So it's a bad, a bad place to be. And yeah, like Mike said, I really don't think that conventional pyrolysis technology has any hope of
Regulation and Support for Recycling
00:10:12
Speaker
scaling up. Like you're going to invent a new way to do it and people are working on it, but it's pretty solidly a different technology like calling it. It's all, it's all chemical recycling, but it's, it's pretty different. So yeah. So. The question I have for you on this, Anthony, is because like you ah you gave a talk, I think, at a the Society of Petroleum Engineers event and then did it as a webinar for for Lux about yeah ah regulation of paralysis. and one of the you know That was like a relatively positive story ah for paralysis technology, ah particularly in Europe, right where there it it has a better chance of being recognized as a chemically recycled materials that's going to be
00:10:56
Speaker
recognized as recycled material it it it appears and there's other, you know, ways in which that regulatory landscape is sort of favorable. So how do you how do you see that shaking out? Like the the regulation looking good, but the technology looking bad, is it just this next generate? It's just going to ensure that people are working on this next generation of paralysis technologies or are there you're going to have you know, maybe some of these not such great ones limping along because of the regulatory support? Or how do you see that shaking out? I don't think the regulatory support in Europe is enough to help these companies limp along, in part because the macro economy in Europe is worse, particularly the cost of energy. It's a very sensitive process to the cost of energy, right?
00:11:45
Speaker
Um, so I think the, the positive regulation situation in Europe will help the next gen technologies take off more quickly. Um, and the fact that Europe just has a much better developed waste economy means that they'll be able to actually source the material they need more easily. But, um, I don't think that it's going to be like a renaissance for plastic pyrolysis over the conventional variety in Europe anytime soon. um And then in the US, we really don't have the regulations in place at all to support these technologies. So it'll be hard even for the next generation technologies to scale in Europe, or excuse me, to scale in the United States.
00:12:25
Speaker
Oh, I was going to just ask, like when you talk about next generation technologies, are you, is this hydrothermal processing or solvent dissolved, solvent based recycling, or like what, what would the next gen look like? Hydrothermal processes is a big one for sure. um If you can basically, instead of doing the reaction in a vacuum or, you know, an oxygen free environment, you do it in a water, an aqueous environment. And that lets you drive the process forward at lower temperatures and ultimately with less energy. And that also means you can scale the process down, right? You could be more economical at smaller scales, which is very important because then you can size closer to what kind of waste supply is available, right? Like your average mechanical recycling facility is like 10,000 tons per year to 20,000 tons per year. So you really want to get into that kind of range as a pyrolysis facility. um Then you can, you know,
00:13:21
Speaker
and That is, I think, theoretically possible, maybe a little bit larger, but that's like theoretically possible with hydrothermal. We're also looking at catalytic technologies, right? um Can you go straight to something like a benzene, toluene, or xylene, ah your BTX? Basically, instead of making oil, can you just make a chemical product? Then you could have theoretically a much better value prop for your whole process, right? um That's hard. I mean, both those things are hard to do. But, um you know, that's really the next generation types of approaches we're looking at. Cool.
00:13:56
Speaker
and And how far out are those in your, yeah I mean, I know there's people like Mira Technologies as the hydrothermal, they're they're building some demo plants now, I think. Yeah, I'd say they're at like a demo stage. They're at like a pilot stage. So they're maybe like three to five years out, um depends on how quickly they move. And it depends a lot on what the appetite is and the regulatory situation, right? Like, is the chemical industry going to run back to the well here and invest in a bunch of stuff after you know getting burned on the like the existing pyrolysis.
00:14:31
Speaker
It's hard to say. So depends a lot on how the environment works out. But I think from a pure technological standpoint, you know, they're there in that three to five year time frame, maybe even a little maybe even a little sooner. Amy, I want your read on all of this because I think there's been all this talk kind of like within the chemicals industry about like chemical recycling. And you had all these like, you know, old engineer types come out in my mentions to like defend this when I like was you know taking shots in the technology. But do you think the consumer like the average consumer is like aware of any of this type of technology development or like this whole set of investments happening? and like
00:15:13
Speaker
i Yeah. i'm i'm just Or you know in addition, I'm also curious, what do you think about like the the companies who are missing these pledges, missing these targets? like is anyone does Is this only for nerds like me and Mike who like read the press releases of of like major oil and gas companies? or like is Is there going to be backlash from this? I'm curious to understand where your head's at with all these different issues.
Consumer Perspectives on Recycling
00:15:39
Speaker
Yeah, these are good questions. um So when we look at recycling in general, and we look at consumer conversations around recycling, um the technologies behind the recycling are definitely not top of mind for the average consumer who's thinking about recycling. So we don't see them distinguishing between traditional mechanical recycling or chemical recycling. Those aren't those aren't terms that consumers tend to use. We do see a variety of issues
00:16:05
Speaker
Come up for consumers when they they talk about recycling this is probably going to be a lot more familiar to everyone because this is something that you probably also face on a daily basis. um the The big issues for them are navigating recycling bin confusion like what. how How to dispose of plastic product ah plastic waste properly? What bin does it go into? What can actually be recycled and what can't? There's a lot of confusing labels on packaging that you know there's different numbers on plastics that people have to look up to figure out whether or not this plastic is actually recyclable or not. So there's a lot of confusion. It's really inconvenient because um it takes extra effort to figure out whether something can be recycled in your own area.
00:16:51
Speaker
something might be labeled as recyclable, but in fact, your community doesn't can't process it. so For example, I live in Ottawa and we cannot recycle um plastic like plastic ah bags or cling wrap, whereas across the river in Gatineau, they can. so When I have friends come from Gatineau here, they want to put my put the plastic cling into the recycling. and I'm like, no, you can't do that. so Anyways, there's there's so many um like My like, and the differences between communities, even that are mostly are very close together and so there's a lot of confusion around the the actual what how to do this correctly.
00:17:33
Speaker
maybe it went on too long about that They're also concerned about the realities of recycling, like what actually gets recycled. So I'm doing my part, I'm sorting everything, I'm cleaning the jars, I'm i'm i'm taking off the labels, trying to do things correctly, but what percentage of these plastics actually get recycled? And when when consumers read articles about this, it's really discouraging. They've they've read articles that suggest like maybe only 10% of plastics actually get recycled. So it feels it feels like, um you know, they're doing their best, but it it doesn't feel like a a sure bet. So it's like, well, this is the responsible way to dispose of things, but I don't actually expect most of this is actually going to have an impact, but I'll i'll do it anyways. It's ah the responsible way to dispose of plastics, but it doesn't feel like a great way to dispose of them for most consumers.
00:18:22
Speaker
They're also concerned about kind of the the the life cycle of plastics. like how long is ah is a plastic um how How frequently can plastic be recycled? um And are these recycled plastics less durable, less safe? Are they potentially leaching? And so for most consumers, the solution is really to reduce plastic use as opposed to they don't think of recycling as like a great solution. But we can and we can zoom into the segment of consumers that are perhaps more invested in and recycling and they are talking about chemical recycling. So if we look at who's talking about chemical recycling, we see it's a group of consumers who are
00:19:04
Speaker
educated or highly educated so these are people who tend to have an undergraduate degree or higher um and these are people who have. ah Environmentalism is a ah very strong value that they hold so they're particularly um they don't necessarily see themselves as mainstream they see themselves as kind of connected to their local communities and they. they value innovation and sustainability. And so it's a particular subset of consumers who would take the time to actually um try to understand the tech behind recycling and understand the future recycling and that sort of thing. So if we look at those consumers and the conversations they're having about
00:19:43
Speaker
um ah sorry, chemical recycling, we do see they're they're talking about a variety of different processes. So hydrothermal processing comes up as something they're interested in. They do talk about pyrolysis, and they talk about solvent based recycling. Those are those are kind of the three um advanced recycling methods that we see come up in their conversation. So there is some awareness there. I think they're they're excited at the potential for this chemical recycling to to help um make hard to recycle plastics more recyclable um and potentially produce higher quality plastics than traditional recycling, but they also have concerns about environmental contamination as a result of the chemical recycling
Environmental Impact of Chemical Recycling
00:20:29
Speaker
processes. so
00:20:30
Speaker
They're reading about um carcinogens being released, but potentially like pollution from these chemical recycling facilities, ah carcinogens like benzene being released into the air potentially, um all releasing greenhouse gases that can contribute to climate change. um and so there They're not entirely convinced that the process chemical process of recycling is necessarily going to be environmentally safe or environmentally beneficial. And they have read, ah and and I can quote an article that they' they're kind of sharing amongst themselves, saying that half of all US states have eased air pollution rules for the process of of some chemical recycling. I don't know if that's correct, but it appeared. Oh, will period it is. Oh, it's correct. yeah Very much so. It's correct.
00:21:17
Speaker
So that that's like a ah concern. It's like, well, they're on one side companies can feel great about risk plastics are not so terrible anymore because we can recycle them. But at the same time, we're we're polluting the environment and potentially releasing dangerous chemicals that can have an impact on human health as well as the environment. I guess I should say on that specifically what what these states have been doing, and we actually, Anthony and I actually interviewed one of the, ah somebody from the American Chemistry Council who's been helping with the lobbying effort for this a couple of years ago. ah Basically, they've they're they're getting the so that the states will regulate these chemical recycling facilities as manufacturing facilities as opposed to ah regulating them as waste management facilities, which
00:22:05
Speaker
Uh, can be, uh, you know, it's it's it's not like there's no standards or throwing the standards out there. I mean, there's still, and, and the the exact difference between those two things ah probably varies quite a bit by, by state, but, um, but it's definitely something that the industry has been pushing for and that a low lot of states have adopted. Are there forms of advanced recycling that are less, um, environmentally damaging or that produce fewer greenhouse gases or. Yeah, I mean the PET methods, so the PET solvolysis or PET depolymerization, that is a pretty low temperature approach. And it also doesn't result in any gases, right? It's a more or less a, you know, liquid, relatively liquid phase um type of process, right? You know, and theoretically speaking,
00:22:58
Speaker
plastic pyrolysis should not result in you know much in the way of emissions, right? Primarily the emissions would come from combusting b a portion of the plastics, and that should result in, if you have a complete combustion, mostly carbon dioxide as an emission, right? Which is not good, um obviously, but not not that painful, right? Or not that harmful. The reality, of course, is that everything leaks. right and you know you can't If you're combusting these plastics, are you completely combusting them? If there's other mixed wastes in there, like if a small amount of PVC or some polystyrene gets in, like are you going to end up combusting? Or like there's like a fluorinated compound on a coating. You combust that. like You don't fully combust it. It ends up going out the smokestack. you know There's a lot of ways in which this can result in in you know these emissions.
00:23:54
Speaker
but it's it's sort of the rub with this right i mean this is the rub with the the dis distributed point that you were making earlier. aren' that like these These chemical recycling facilities are not more polluting than a average refinery or camera chemicals manufacturing site, right? However, they they however you know especially as we get into But it's sort of trying to make the rub with these smaller this, right? and more distributed, it's more important I mean, to this is the rub with the have them closer to the sources of of waste. So they may be they may be closer to communities that did not have have chemical production facilities in them before. And and I think that's that's part of the reason it's become you know more of a political issue. And we've seen like a bright mark, a huge paralysis developer, they had to cancel the whole plant they were trying to build in Georgia because of exactly the sort of community resistance.
00:24:50
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And I mean, like, I mean, the problem, I would go a bit further. I'd say like, in general, one of the issues with chemical production that has to be solved over the next three two to three decades is the fact that refineries have a ton of extremely negative health impacts on all the communities surrounding them. like like there's this huge band of communities in Louisiana, um you know, that's the sort of the center of the American refining complex, you know, and the health impacts there are are dire, right?
00:25:23
Speaker
um Obviously today, if you build a brand new facility, it's a lot better than it was in the 70s, but it's still not good.
Environmental Justice Concerns
00:25:32
Speaker
like I still would not want my house to be next to a ah refinery complex under you know most circumstances. um Exactly. And I think a lot of consumers are thinking about this as well in terms of of um environmental justice or environmental racism in terms of thinking about where do these facilities get located? What neighborhood, what communities are they placed in and why? Because certain communities
00:25:59
Speaker
will have um more cloud and leverage to be able to say, no, we're not here. um And often um and these polluting factories, or in this case, perhaps the recycling facilities, often end up being located in minority communities. um And so this is where, again, there's um Yeah, consumers are thinking about it's not just about not wanting to live close to them, but also thinking, where do they end up and why? What are the the environment? Yeah, environmental justice type of issues, right? They're not just I don't want this near me, but do I have to feel badly about the fact that, you know, other people are being, ah you know, polluted for my for my single use plastics. Yeah. And I think part of the problem
00:26:51
Speaker
you know, switching gears seamlessly as we do on this podcast. You mentioned, Amy, that there's all this, you know, your friends from the next town over have a totally different system. And that's, that's true. That's true in America. It's true in a lot of places. But especially in America and Canada, ah waste management is devolved almost entirely to local municipalities and on some, you know, state level or regional level, you know, province level actors. so um But primarily, it's a local municipal ah function, right which is bad both in the context of having a consistent system that works well you know on on any level, but it's particularly problematic for something like chemical recycling, where you want to build a really big large scale system that is going to necessarily draw resources, draw waste from
US vs. Europe Recycling Systems
00:27:43
Speaker
multiple communities. right
00:27:44
Speaker
um If the minimum size of your facility is 100,000 tons, that's like that's a couple of cities at least, right or a couple ah couple communities, or maybe like the biggest communities could could support that. But that's realistically drawing from multiple of these locations. So you know in Europe, and part of the reason why we're positive on Europe that Mike was mentioning, is that they do have relatively comprehensive regulation on the books, especially now with the PPWR. And in general, waste management is more of a more of a national level.
00:28:19
Speaker
um issue as opposed to a, or they have at least consistent national level regulations. So one of the big questions has been, can we get consistent national level regulations in the United States? The answer is no. So thanks so much for joining us. you know If you like the podcast, you can how but we'll give it a little more time than that. um Yeah. Unfortunately, the answer really does look like no, but the the Biden administration has put out this
00:28:50
Speaker
you know They've been more proactive on this issue than I'd say any past administration. um They put out this this press release recently in July. Basically,
Biden Administration's Plastic Strategy
00:29:01
Speaker
what's it called? The Biden-Harris administration and releases a new strategy to tackle plastic pollution, take action to reduce single-use plastics and federal operations. So there's a couple of things in here I'll call out. um There's about $250 million dollars worth of grants from the EPA to waste management you know different waste management efforts. That funding was authorized in 2020 in the Save Our Seas. There's another $70 million in funding for ocean cleanup. The federal government itself will um reduce attempt to reduce its use of plastics. And getting back to your earlier point, Amy,
00:29:40
Speaker
um the EPA is going to write probably stricter rules for air pollutants, right, and emissions, um primarily from the manufacture of plastics, but this will probably almost certainly I would say apply to recycling facilities as well, um given that many of them are considered manufacturing facilities.
00:30:03
Speaker
Unfortunately, the EPA is really limited in its scope. you know it can It can mostly limit what happens in the fence line, like in a facility, but it has a very limited scope because of the way the laws are written to regulate like interstate commerce, you know, like to regulate the the overall scope of the waste system and the way the waste system operates, or things like the design of plastics and how those fit into the recycling systems. So it's going to be tough, I think, to to um get a comprehensive set of regulations in the US.
00:30:38
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I was it was pretty underwhelmed by this. so Looking at the I think calling it as a strategy is is maybe generous. You know, I just reading the the the summary here like this is the this the mobilizing federal action on past plastic pollution. This is the report strategy report they they put out and says reaches two key top line findings. One, successfully combating plastic pollution requires the United States to take a comprehensive approach that addresses the impact of plastic through the entire life cycle. And to the scope, scale and complexity of plastic pollution requires coordinated action from all levels of government. Which is like, okay, but and that neither of those things is false. Those are both true, but that's, you know, it's, it's pretty, pretty basic stuff and, and
00:31:32
Speaker
ah you know I think it's not maybe not even so much a criticism of the administration. I think a lot of the things that you you know that you would want to do, you know like a plastics tax or like a ah you know putting in ah real um EPR schemes at a national level, having more you know more national regulations restricting certain types or uses of of single-use plastic, Um, would all require legislation, right? And that would have to go through Congress. And that's just, especially an election year, but probably period, uh, any, anything really significant to pass, not passing anything really significant on that. It's just, is not very likely to happen. So they may be doing about as well as they can with, with realistically the tools they have, but I don't really see a lot in this that, um,
00:32:32
Speaker
that I is going to move the needle that much, it seems to me. no The point that that is made in the press release is like this is this is the first time that the federal government is actually looking at plastic pollut you know pollution as an issue in any kind of systemic way. So that's good and and the government should be. um you know if is If we're going to make any any sort of progress on this, it's it's true that that's going to be needed, but this is kind of at best just to start on that.
00:33:05
Speaker
So with that, I will actually say for real this time, you can follow this podcast. You can like and subscribe or on Apple podcasts or on Spotify or anywhere you can get your podcasts. The United States government does actually get its act together and pass some sort of comprehensive legislation on plastic waste.
Conclusion and Further Engagement
00:33:26
Speaker
You better believe that we will be talking about it on this podcast. I in particular will not be shutting up about it. But, since that seems pretty unlikely, we'll probably have to find something else to talk about next time.
00:33:41
Speaker
Innovation Matters is a production of Lux Research, the leading sustainable innovation research and advisory firm. You can follow this podcast on Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you want more, check out www.luxresearchinc dot.com slash blog for all the latest news, opinions, and articles. so